A friend recently requested that I use her new thumb drive to copy a LARGE amount of data from my computer so that I can share it with her; she lives several states away, and she chose the conveyance via thumb drive instead of FTP because it would be simpler for her.

The data collection I want to copy to the thumb drive includes large number of photos from my iPhoto library, as well as PowerPoint slideshows, TIFF image files, and other data. It will probably total 2 gigabytes or more. Some of this data dates back to 2007, so it has been accumulating for several years.

The thumb drive is brand-new, shipped to me still in its original sealed store packaging. It is a PNY 32 GB High Performance Flash Drive. There is a minor nomenclature in fine print on the packaging: 93000044F-F-32G. My iMac's "get info" window indicates the drive's format to be "MS-DOS (FAT32)" with a creation date of Dec. 31, 1969. (go figure)

Questions: If I use aftermarket software like iPhoto Library Manager to copy over key Events into a new iPhoto library on the PNY drive, will the drive's formatting ruin the metadata and/or anything else? Is there anything I can do to prevent problems? Should I reformat the drive?

The thumb drive is brand-new, shipped to me still in its original sealed store packaging. It is a PNY 32 GB High Performance Flash Drive. There is a minor nomenclature in fine print on the packaging: 93000044F-F-32G. My iMac's "get info" window indicates the drive's format to be "MS-DOS (FAT32)" with a creation date of Dec. 31, 1969. (go figure)